James Bond Aston Martin DB5 review

Driving the ultimate DB5
: the James Bond Aston Martin, days before it goes to
auction.

Along with the Vulcan bomber, James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 is Britain’s greatest Cold War deterrent.

In Albion’s hour of direst need, Bond would blast his silver Aston through enemy lines to slay our enemies and bed their women. Well, that’s how it seemed to me as a schoolboy in thrall to the Sixties super-spy.

So sliding into the leather armchair that once cossetted Sean Connery is redolent with history and a pitifully meaningful occasion. This might be a knackered old Aston Martin, but it’s no ordinary knackered old Aston Martin.

Like a well-worn slipper, the interior is comfy and tatty, with ragged edges to the upholstery and carpets that have seen better days, and a few moths. The clutch pedal sighs under my foot and the floor-mounted throttle takes up half its travel before the engine responds and the old warhorse eases on to the road, its tired suspension joints groaning.

It’s been briefly in the care of acknowledged marque expert Richard Stewart Williams, who sounds like Q as he lists the things that work and those that don’t.

“It’s the most famous Aston Martin in the world,” he says, “probably the most famous car in the world, but at the moment there’s zero pleasure in driving it.”

Richard has budgeted £50,000 just to get this car into a state where it’s capable of roaring onto the auction stage. That’s a new clutch and a brake overhaul, together with a fair bit of hard graft to make the gadgets work.

What he can’t do is alter the fact that it needs a full, body-off overhaul. “That would cost about £300,000, which is a tiny percentage of the car’s worth,” he says.

As if to prove its frailty, one of the bumper over-riders rams pops out from its socket over a pothole and stays that way for the rest of our drive. The top of the gear lever flaps open with every gear change, exposing the red ejector-seat button.

Richard’s already allowed me to drive an immaculately restored Aston from his workshop and I own and hill-climb a DB5, so I’ve a fair idea what a good one should feel like. This doesn’t feel remotely like a good one. It’s unbearably sad. Bond would never have allowed his charger to fall this low…

I point the battered nose south on the A3. Revs pick up and the throaty exhaust blares as the needles climb up the dials. A lorry driver realises what it is and toots, a hatchback passes with the entire family pressed, goggle-eyed, to the windows.

Where this lovely old car ends up after Wednesday depends on the vicissitudes of fate, a man’s desire, an oligarch’s boastfulness. It might just disappear into a private collection, just as it has lain for the past 40 years.

That seems almost unforgivable and for a few moments I forget the car’s value, rarity and fragility. Pulling out from behind the truck, I flash the lamps and the hatchback respectfully scarpers. It’s now or never and I stand on it as if Auric Goldfinger’s henchmen were on my tail, machine gun bullets clattering the armour-plate screen.

The road resounds to the old engine’s noise, the cabin reverberates and the trees blur as the speed builds. Like some old elephant, the Aston trumpets its defiance as it stretches its rheumatic joints towards the magic ton.

I’m half crazy with the privilege of it, almost in tears to be doing it and slightly horrified to be going for it in a car that’s worth more than I could ever hope to repay.

“It ought to be owned by someone who uses it and enjoys it,” Williams says. “If that means it gets to be seen by the public, then that’s all the better.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself, Bond’s old Cold War warrior deserves a happy ending. Let’s hope it gets one.